Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 9, 1994 TAG: 9405090077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DEBORAH HASTINGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
Or at least they thought they had adopted Michael, until the boy's biological father stepped in to stop the arrangement.
Now the Stenbecks are caught up in a legal fight over who should have custody of the boy they have raised since he was a day old.
This is the newest dilemma in private adoptions - biological fathers who demand custody when mothers choose to give a child away.
It is a problem that yields more questions than answers: How do you legislate an industry whose stock-in-trade is flesh? And what are the rights of biological fathers?
"In our society, fathers have been seen as superfluous. Fathers have been nothing but breadwinners to the family," said Jon Ryan, a spokesman for the National Organization of Birth Fathers and Adoption Reform, who himself spent five years searching for his biological daughter.
Stories like Michael's are forcing the system to pay more attention.
Mark King had had a brief and stormy relationship with 15-year-old Stephanie Harman; it ended with a fight when Harman was five months' pregnant. King, who has a history of drug abuse, was arrested for hitting her but never charged.
At first, King agreed with Harman that their baby should be adopted by the Stenbecks, who knew her family. She moved in with the Stenbecks, gave birth on Feb. 27, 1991, and signed the baby over to them.
But in the time after his breakup with Harman, King had attempted suicide. While recuperating, he had a change of heart and decided to raise his child. A day after Michael's birth, he sued for custody.
There are differences from another such case, in which Cara Clausen decided to give away her baby, who became known as Baby Jessica, without informing the father, Dan Schmidt, that she was pregnant. She changed her mind after the birth, and Schmidt, whom she later married, asserted his rights.
After nearly three years of court battles, the Michigan couple who had tried to adopt Jessica lost their fight to retain custody of her. Screaming and crying "Mommy!" 2-year-old Jessica was taken from Jan and Roberta DeBoer and sent to live with the Schmidts in Iowa.
The outcome for Michael is still in doubt. A judge has named the Stenbecks legal guardians - while granting King visitation rights - but King has appealed.
"At some point, each parent has to decide `What is the best thing for my child?' " said Peggy Stenbeck. "And how can that be to pull him out of the only home he's ever known? Why ruin a happy, healthy childhood? There's absolutely no reason to do that. Especially when Mark and the birth mother have always been welcome to be part of this family."
For his part, King asserts that he no longer uses drugs, has a steady factory job and is willing to do whatever it takes to be a good parent. Michael, he says, should be raised by blood kin.
"Millions of other single parents raise children," he has said. "Who says I can't do it?"
The number of birth-father custody cases has increased, legal experts say. There are no national figures kept on such lawsuits, but Jane Gorman of the Academy of California Adoption Attorneys says about half of her 100 cases involve birth fathers.
The increase of these cases is "an understandable and healthy consequence of the women's movement and the request that fathers become more involved in the lives of their children," says Joan Hollinger, an adoption law expert and visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
There are at least four cases in California. Of the three that have been decided, rulings tended toward granting greater custody rights for birth fathers.
That trend is alarming to some legal experts and adoption advocates.
"The rhetoric I'm hearing in California is, `Because I am the biological progenitor of this child, I have a claim to this child that is superior to anyone else,' " Hollinger said.
The reasoning "goes back to a totally outmoded conception that a child is a piece of chattel, that it can be possessed and owned only by virtue of a biological connection," she said.
One of the four lawsuits, a 1992 case, established legal precedent by allowing the civil rights of biological fathers to supersede the legal standard of deciding in a child's best interest.
The state Supreme Court ruled in one case that an unwed father objecting to adoption must come forward as soon as he learns of the pregnancy and offer "a full commitment to his parental responsibilities - emotional, financial and otherwise" to gain custody.
A new California law believed to be the first of its kind takes effect in 1995. Designed to avoid heart-wrenching legal battles that drag on for years, it requires biological parents to be counseled and informed of their rights before birth. It also requires consent forms to be signed within 120 days of birth.
The law, however, doesn't specifically account for the rights of birth fathers. Another bill that would clarify those rights has met stiff opposition from groups including private adoption attorneys.
by CNB